Interview with Howard Wolfson (Deputy Mayor of NYC)

March 3, 2009

In 2008 Brooklyn singer songwriter Alina Simone released a passionate and compelling album of modern Russian folk covers that was one of the year’s best.  Now she has turned her attention a little closer to home and is completing a new album of her own material in English (which is previewed below) — but not before she dabbles a bit by playing a Britney Spears cover or two.  I asked her about all this and found the line from Yanka Dyagileva to Britney is shorter than you might think.

Howard:  Okay, so, you have gone from Russian Folk Music to Britney Spears.

Alina:  Well let’s not get carried away. I was kind of joking with that.  Like I’ve done a little, a few Britney Spears covers but, the new album isn’t Britney Spears covers or anything –

Howard:  I bet all the Britney Spears fans will be very disappointed to hear that.

Alina:  Probably, but you know I just have to follow my own path (laughing).  The new album is more Sinead O’Connor than Britney Spears I have to admit.  But I am trying to bring a little Britney into my heart and not be so sad and dark all the time. I think that would be a good step for me.

Howard:  But you have played some of her stuff live, right?

Alina:  Yeah, yeah.  Oops I Did it Again has been a favorite; and I’m working on a mandolin version of Toxic, and I’ve had one rehearsal of the Britney Spears cover band that I’m putting together here in Brooklyn, which is a lot of fun.

Howard:  And what is it about Ms. Spear’s music that attracts your interest?

Alina:  You know, now let’s not overstate this, let’s not get carried away here. I was in Russia, and the song Toxic was completely inescapable, and I hated it, and I was so annoyed, I was like, Fuck there’s that song again!  But then when I got back, whenever I heard it I found it strangely comforting.  It was like that experience of being in junior high and having all of those eighties hits just drilled into you until you know every word and it’s all vaguely comforting, and you just want to be surrounded by this cloud of mainstream pop all the time.  That’s how it started.

Howard:  I’m having this experience myself because as a parent you listen to a lot of that kind of music and my daughter is becoming obsessed with Hanna Montana slash Miley Cyrus and when we are in the car she insists on listening to her songs over and over and over again.  And so over time I’ve actually come to like some of it.

Alina:  Yeah and I actually think that in terms of having kids. I definitely want to be the kind of parent that can listen to what their kid is listening to with an open mind without a knee jerk reaction against it.  I want to be able to evaluate it on its own terms.  Like, the Britney Spears songs I like the most are the ones that Britney Spears had very little to do with, they were written by other people, and those people really know what they’re doing.  They’re incredible craftsmen.

Howard:  Have you heard the Ryan Adams cover I Want it That Way?  It’s awesome.

Alina:  Well actually it’s funny because I did a reading from a chapter of my book, and my publisher asked me to do Britney Spears covers after reading.  At the Russian Samovar in Midtown and so I sang Oops I Did it Again.

Howard:  Awesome.

Alina:  It’s making the rounds.

Howard:  Alright, so let’s talk about the book.  What’s it about?

Alina:  There’s a lot of stuff about my family, my Russian family, my family in the Ukraine, my family here.  There’s a chapter about religion, about sort of choosing between being Russian Orthodox and being Jewish, because my family’s kind of half and half.  There’s a lot of stuff about trials and tribulations on the lowest rung of the Indie Rock Circuit here in the States.

Sinead O’Connor comes up because that’s who I wanted to be.  I wanted to be the one pop star who I loved who was really rebellious and didn’t care about being pretty, even though she was really beautiful and who really sang with passion, and emotion. And you know she just didn’t sound horribly over produced like everyone else.

I grew up in a family with pretty, you know pretty conservative values in terms of what their child was supposed to do when she grew up.  Like with a lot of recent immigrants.  I was actually born in the Ukraine and my parents struggled a lot in order to give me all the opportunities of being, middle class American kid growing up here.  So, I always wanted to sing but I was really scared of disappointing them, and so I actually didn’t play my first show until I was twenty six years old.  So, you know, slowly just because I was just so terrified and I just thought that I would fail and my parents would be really disappointed in me, everyone else would be disappointed in me, I wouldn’t be good at it.  And so I was really full of a lot of anxieties and insecurities and depression and so the book is kind of about, like overcoming that to be honest — how I just kind of forced myself to do it.  I’m still doing that.

Howard:  So, you were born in Ukraine, you came here, and then you went back as an adult after college, right?  Is that when you decided to record the last album?

Alina:  No — I’ve been listening to Yanka Dyagileva’s music before I ever went back to Russia.  I was listening to it when I first moved to New York, like in my mid twenties, and someone in Brighton Beach who I met on the street, a performer on the street, gave me a cassette tape, just like her music was circulated when she was alive. I just fell in love with it and I played it endlessly on tour. It never left my car — I was totally obsessed and people would make fun of me.  And I would tell people I really want to cover this woman’s music, but I thought it was the kind of thing I could only do if I became, you know, super successful and self indulgent because that’s just the kind of thing you do after you’ve peaked and say, ‘Well now I’m on the downswing and so I can do that self indulgent project and not do a very good job of it.’  And so I was waiting for that moment, but then a friend of mind convinced me to apply for this little emerging artists grant in the meantime, and I just a wrote one page thing about wanting to make this record, and I ended up getting it.  And it came with a deadline of nine months.  All of a sudden I really had to do it.  To get the record in the hands of these people within nine months.  So I –

Howard:  And you did it and it was fabulous.  And now that artistic moment has passed and you are back singing in English?

Alina:  Yeah, much to your dismay. I am singing in English.

Howard:  Not just to my dismay.   You have a huge fan base out there who was expecting the follow up in Russian and now they’re going to have to adjust to an English language CD from you.

Alina:  Believe me there are just as many people who are going to be relieved that I’m not singing in Russian any more.  A lot of them are Russian.

Howard:  And what is the direction of the new album?  It’s not in Russian, but is it political in the way that your last album was?

Alina:  It’s about Obama.  No, just kidding.  It’s, it’s like, I wish that I had this awesome story for it because I feel like that’s what really sold the Yanka album, having this amazing story, but I feel like it’s just twelve good songs.  It has nothing to do with one another.  Some that are literally like dance fever type jams, some I play auto harp as the lead instrument, some are slow, and some are like very heavy and just abrasive rock.  So I don’t know, I mean I haven’t sequenced it yet, and it’s really, we’re literally mixing the last song tonight.   And I think the hardest thing will be to sequence it – I did a concept album –  the Yanka album was a concept album, it was all of a piece, and this one isn’t.

Howard:  And when will it be out?

Alina:  Oh Howard, I don’t know.  I don’t know who’s going to put it out and the world is so weird right now.

Howard:  Presumably the economy is not making it easy for people who are looking for music labels to put their music on.

Alina:  Yeah I mean it’s like I’ve never made any money, ever, so — for me it’s not really about the money.  But I also just would want it to be done well, you know, if it’s put out.  For it not to be botched basically. I may end up just doing it myself.  I’m not ruling that out.  So I don’t know. I guess I have to talk to my people, which will take about eight minutes, and then make a decision.

The other thing is that it’s been two years since I started writing these songs, and I’ve lost all ability to judge how good they are or how good the album is because I’ve heard them all so so many times.  So I think at this point I really need to get it out to some people who haven’t heard any of my new stuff at all, and get some feedback about what they think and what the possibilities are for it, because I know that I’m weird, and I’m under no delusions that I’m a good judge.

Howard:  I don’t know, I think your last album was probably the best selling album of that genre last year, wouldn’t’ you think?

Alina:  Yes, the huge niche I occupied in Soviet cover music, only released in the U.S

Howard:  If Tower Records still existed you would have your own little section all to yourself.  Russian folk music covers.

Alina:  Right, yeah, maybe I should just keep building on that.

Howard:  No, no, no, I’m sure it will be great.  Well, thanks for doing this.

Alina:  Thank you.